Met a couple of interesting people at the Mission, including Tibor from Hungary. We had seen him a couple of times but not chatted in depth. He used to be a customs officer in Hungary until their inclusion in the European Union when he was made redundant. He had been saving his money to buy a house, find a wife and have a family but decided to travel instead. He loves travelling so much he hasn't stopped and has visited one hundred countries.
He had just returned from a trip to Timbuctoo but only got to within 130 kms of the place when he ran out of transport options and discovered that he had malaria. He was able to get treatment for his malaria but was stuck in a small town without any food for four days. He spent most of his days boiling water and cooling it to drink. The locals offered him food but he saw they had small bowls of food that were not enough for those eating it so lived on mangoes the whole time. He looked rather yellow when we saw him and he had lost a lot of weight.
He told us stories of his childhood and about his last trip to Russia. He and four friends did a road trip and passed through a city the day before Putin arrived there. In a checkpoint they had their luggage checked and they found he had fake IDs that he had made in Bangkok. One was a journalist pass and another a student pass. As a result of this the officers thought he was a spy and put he and his three friends in prison. He described his eight days in a Russian prison and they were horrific. He wants to visit Russia again but has to wait for his five year ban to pass before he can return. He speaks Russian so it easy travel for him. He also told us about being hassled by the police in Guinea for taking a photo of an elephant statue. He had some interesting tales to tell.
We checked the status of the borders between Senegal and The Gambia and found that they had been closed due to a transport dispute and had reopened the night before we left Bamako.
We had a farewell meal with Chris at a Chinese restaurant in Bamako and enjoyed some aubergine dishes. In the morning the taxi we had organised didn't show so John flagged down a guy who took us to the bus station. We took a very hot crowded bus to Kayes and had a break down on the way. After a night in Kayes we got up early and headed for the bush taxi park outside town where we had to wait for one and a half hours for a sept-place (7 seater) Peugeot to fill up and take us the 80 kms to the border town of Diboli.
The border town was a shambles of a place on the side of the river. We found the office to check out of Mali and had to walk across the river bridge to find the Senegalese Immigration office. It turned out to be a long, hot, dusty, unsignposted walk into the middle of the town of Kidira. Once we were stamped in we had to take a taxi back near the bridge to the taxi park.
This is our Senegalese sept-place taxi. We waited three hours under a thatched roof in a dirty dusty yard for this to fill up. Finally we had five of therequired seven passengers and a man suggested we all put in some extra money to pay for the remaining two seats so we could leave before dark. Everyone agreed and we set off.
The locals spend a lot of time cutting down the last remaing big trees for firewood. This for some people is the only way they can get an income as the farms they work or the animals they keep give them just enough to live on and not enough to sell.
It was 7 pm when we arrived in Tambacounda and took a taxi to a large hotel in town. The hotel had a pool, a restaurant and free Wifi. Unfortunately Blogger was unavailable for the whole time we had free Wifi! We were here for our 33rd wedding anniversary. The pool was too hot to swim in and the restaurant was charging first world prices for third world quality!
We wandered around the town looking for some places to have a cold drink and find somewhere less expensive to eat but couldn't find anything else. The streets were dusty and busy with donkey and bullock carts lugging goods around. The most popular taxis were horse and cart buggies.
Senegalese have a life expectancy of 62.3 years, a literacy rate of 39.3%, with 52% of the population living on $2 a day. 90% of Senagalese are Sufi Muslims ruled by the Mourides.
There was not much to do in Tambacounda so we had two nights in our airconditioned hotel and headed off for Velingara on The Gambia border.
